


Ascending Stairways Leading Up To Nowhere

by DeyaniraSan



Series: Empty Glimpses Of A Future Passed [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Lavellan and Varric are good friends, Lavellen and Dorian are besties in case someone didn't get the memo, Mage Lavellan - Freeform, Multi, Post-Canon, Post-Trespasser, Varric's POV, basically a continuation after the events of the dlc and what could have followed, so is dorian's, solas and lavellan's relationship is only mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 01:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12716790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeyaniraSan/pseuds/DeyaniraSan
Summary: “We cannot not talk about this,” he finally said, and in the gulf the seagulls cried, and the waves rolled in a cacophony of familiarity that he had started to associate with home, the silence stressing between them like the tendrils of penumbra lengthening as the sunset died beyond a fiery horizon.“I can’t be your friend Inquisitor if you don’t let me. And I am against friends wasting out in my home as they run away from the world out of principle.”Her eyes turned soft, before they showed even a glimpse of the hurt and vulnerability that lingered behind them. And then it was gone, and Ellana was composed again in front of him, her worry and compassion putting his worry and compassion first. Oh well, what a pair they both made.“I am no Inquisitor,” she responded softly. “Not anymore.”





	Ascending Stairways Leading Up To Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Niahara_Erskine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niahara_Erskine/gifts).



> Hello everyone! This is my first DAI fanfiction as a coping mechanism for finishing the game and currently suffering. A lot. 
> 
> A couple of notes about this fic. Unlike most of my other works it was a) written in one day and b) mostly unbetaed, so I apologise for this. This will be the first part of a series of one shots following the Inquisitor in the aftermath of the Trespasser DLC. I have a couple of idea about this series so we will see how that goes!
> 
> Specifically about this fic:  
> 1) It is Varric's POV on how he sees the Inquisitor after months in the events of Trespasser. Because of that some information remains locked.  
> 2) I have a couple of headcanons about the world such as how the amulet Dorian gave to Lavellan works, about Dalish customs how they might braid longer hair in specific haircuts, and how Thedas has some semblance of time zones because of how big it is.  
> 3) I am detailing on the fact that the Inquisitor is still the Anchor created from Fen'harel's orb. Will build upon that slowly. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Hightown was surrounded by the damp misty breeze of the ocean the air permeated with a combination of smells of salt, mud and sea. The sky was lost at the horizon a lighter line against the darker sea, jagged houses and buildings cutting into the endless view the balcony of the last floor offered like jagged puzzle pieces of sun kissed clay and earthy colours. Compared to Orlais it was dirty, the buildings unpolished, almost barbaric, yet even so they held a steadfast grace, the small columns and murals twining around vines and soft washed yellows of stones and earth that characterised the Free Marches. A light breeze chilled the air in the room, the winter’s cold evident in the mild air of the Marches, the crisp smell of cold permeating in the room.

Ellana didn’t move from her position next to the window, even as her fingers have long chilled around the glass in her grasp and she could no longer appreciate the winds against her cheeks. Her head rested against the wooden frame, and even the lower position of the sun gave any indication of the time’s passing at all. She could not tell how long it had been.

“I have been told that staring bleakly and longingly at the horizon for hours usually does not yield to any practical results.”

Her derisive snort seemed to come from far away, even as it jolted her body from its motionless making her away of the pain that followed periods of not moving at all. Still, she did not turn as she continued to follow the seagulls’ flight across the harbour, the whispers in her mind supplying an unwilling word for the familiar creatures.

“Speaking from your experience as a writer?” she quipped, but the sound was dry, lacking any humour usually lacing her comebacks. She heard a soft sigh, the soft clink of glasses and the bottle she left abandoned behind her on the study’s desk before the old armchair creaked as Varric seated himself in it.

“From personal experience, in fact,” he answered nonplussed. It made her turn just marginally to see him raise his glass her way before downing it one gulp.

“Have you spent a lot of time gazing longingly towards the sky? Is that where your poetic flair comes from?” she asked despite herself, some life filling back into her voice as she attempted a smile.

“Careful Sparky, I might actually take offence one of these days on you insulting my writing. I am not a _poet_ , I write prose! There is a big difference,” Varric argued.

“Does the Viscount of Kirkwall really have time to sit around and write the next part of Knights and Swords? Scandalous. Though I think your fans are happy to have new material… to use,” and her response was humorous, almost resembling back to the time things were normal… well, as normal as a whole in the sky getting ready to swallow the world could be – and in Varric’s vast experience that was in fact quite a normal fact – that he couldn’t help but laugh.

“You mean fan. A single fan. No one reads that one besides Cassandra.” Varric was pleased to see his banter made his former Inquisitor smile and snort at his comment, finally making her move from the same position he had left her in the morning when he had gone to attend some nonsensical meeting for the city council demanding ‘his immediate and urgent attention’. He was right in assuming one of the nobles had lost his precious Nug and now he wanted Varric to create a search party for the damned creature. Really, he wondered why he bothered half of the time. Then he remembered that actually owning the city was pretty convenient for not getting arrested for the normal things he used to do all the time with Hawke.

“Has she written you demanding the next part?” he hazarded a guess, as Ellana moved around his table to pour herself another glass of drink.

“Several, in fact. Of course, none of them were clear in their meaning, but the beginning tone was permeating the letter more than a magic in the Fade,” she answered matter-of-factly and he laughed. He watched as she struggled to pour a drink with only one arm, and he supressed the urge to help her. He did not want to linger on those first days after and how she had reacted to his offers of help. As she filled her glass, her violet eyes met his and the humour there warmed him more than the brandy could ever do. It was so hard to remember most days the look, that the moments when he saw it like now actually made him genuinely happy.

“Of course,” he agreed. “I would expect nothing else from our esteemed Seeker,” and Ellana rolled her eyes, as she took a sip, but her good mood washed away with the next chilly wintery breeze across the harbour, her eyes glassing over with thoughts he could only phantom, her face setting in the same hard lines of grief and sorrow she never had expressed even after the Exalted Council.

“The council had been a waste of time,” he continued only to see her snap out of that state. She regarded him, but he could tell she wasn’t really there, her eyes glassy as she pretended to give him his attention lost in her thoughts. He tried not to sigh, knowing that she would not appreciate him pointing this fact out, instead option to continue his story. “Nugs went missing, love affairs went down in flames – well perhaps not in flames, we all know how the greatest mage love story ended up here, but enough to bring charges and an investigation of murder in the ‘nobility’, and some lords thought they were smart dealing with pirates and lost their bollocks somewhere in Lowtown as their deals went sour.” Perhaps he was doing something right because at least that seemed to snap her to the present as she raised a quizzical eyebrow at him. “Quite literally he explained,” and he was delighted to see her let out a small laugh followed by a disbelieving shake of head.

“And I thought my days of dealing with councils were hard enough. I must admit even as she thought about it, I don’t think Josephine ever castrated someone after a council.”

“Sparky, my meetings seem yours look normal,” Varric answered back as he took another swig of his refilled glass hoping the alcohol will wipe away any details of his morning and evening.

“My meetings? Normal? Varric, with no offence do I need to remind you who you’re speaking with?” she jested back.

“Well… maybe not normal. But I am getting close.”

“We almost destroyed the Winter Palace,” she answered deadpan, and Varric fought the smirk playing on his lips, because the world may have gone to shit, and he might have blamed himself for it – at least partially, but the good things have come out of it too, like Ellana’s friendship.

“Could happen to anyone.”

“Twice.”

Varric bowed his head in mock defeat, before finishing his glass and regarding his friend leaning over the table on one hand, her eyes sparkling with mischief as she won their battle of wits. For now, at least. In general, Varric had a better winning ratio, but if losing meant to see her act even a bit like a person and not a lost shell of his former self he would say anything to make her smile. Ellana Lavellan was a strong woman and a good friend who had clearly had been through too much.

It had been a little over a week since she had first docked in the Kirkwall bay. A week since she had set foot on the lands she had once called her home, even if it far away in the north-eastern wilderness, not inside the confines of the suffocating port city. Last he had seen her had been at the brisk peak of summer heat, the Winter Palace grand and full of schemes for their downfall. It had been the nigh end of the heat, when the whole thing happened, when he had been dragged across Eluvians into forgotten elven crossroads.

There had been several months since she had been betrayed.

Inquisitor Lavellan wasn’t the same at all as the woman he remembered. When he had first seen her gone were the beautiful even if still practical gowns. She wasn’t dressed in rags, but just plainly as a traveller that been adrift the sea for a month before reaching the Marches. When he had seen her his first thought had been on the lines ‘oh shit’ because she looked like crap and he hadn’t been looking at her missing arm hidden in the folds of her many robes. Her eyes were dull and lost, and it took her moments to even see him in the sea of people, her right hand resting on the dagger at her hip, a very faraway look from the Inquisitor he had left behind after Solas’ betrayal.  

He had wanted to ask, but one severe look that had once commanded army told him the woman before him wasn’t as broken as he thought. But she wasn’t talking either. They weren’t talking unless it was some inane conversation so different from the words always at the tip of Varric’s tongue that it made him feel mad as they resounded in his head. But they all were under the cathegory of Things-They-Were-Not-Talking-About. As soon as he had even asked about that damned Chuckles, her face had twisted in a mask of mixed feeling before she had retreated in her room not to come back until the next morning. Even so, she hadn’t left; not in the middle of the night as he had feared she would, like a touch from a ghost of the past and not the next day when he gave her the key to the estate he had promised to her what seemed ages ago. Of course, that was another thing they did not talk about, as was her sudden presence back in Kirkwall with no explanation, and Varric would grow a beard and shave his chest hair before he even thought to kick a friend out of his home.

Yet… Yet, even so…

“Ellana,” he said slowly, seriously, her name foreign on his tongue when the silence between them stretched as it was wont to do lately ever since she had come to visit him, her eyes far away lost in whispers of things Varric did not even want to think about.

His soft words were enough to bring her back, and this time he sighed when he saw the dark circles under her eyes, almost blue, and the deep lines that marred her face from constant frowning and worrying.

“What are you doing?” he asked, and he knew she understood his words from the way her muscles stiffened, yet her face remained as serene as ever before, only her eyes glowing in violet fires with the slightest warnings.

“Drinking,” she responded in a way that it was meant to be obvious, because this too was something They-Did-Not-Talk-About. Varric was reaching his patience slowly; seeing his friend as a simple shell was something that not even him wanted to attempt to fix with laughter and imposed cheer.

“You know what I asked,” he stated simply, tiredly, feeling a fraction of her burden pressing on himself. It wasn’t for the first time that he actually contemplated his age; even as the dwarves lived far longer than humans it was impossible not to feel tinges of regret and the passing of time after everything. Especially after everything. He had seen two of his closest friends suffer far too much to even contemplate that time had been merciful in the past 7 years.

“We are not talking about it,” she answered finally, and even as her voice was calm and serene, a voice that had been born to belong to a diplomat, which Josephine only groomed into hiding the best nuances and inflexions into a perfect mask, tinged with the slightest bits of annoyance. It echoed his thoughts so perfectly Varric snorted unbelievably, shaking his head at the irony, because of course. It brought him bittersweet memories of almost 5 years past – had it been so long already? – of Haven, and a Dalish elf that had stumbled from a whole in the sky into the biggest political shit he had ever had the pleasure of encountering, and mind you he had had to deal with the Merchant’s Guild all his life. Her words have been less controlled as they were now, her irritation seeping through easily even as she kindly held back and listened to everyone. It was so similar yet intrinsically different, and he mourned his empty glass that he could not use the fire of alcohol to burn away the pang in his heart.

“Of course, we are not talking about it,” he replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We are not talking about this, or how you are obviously dead on your feet-“

“-am not,” she tried to protest but his voice was louder in normal situations, and someone unwilling to talk was not ever going to cover the words of Varric Tethras.

“-or how you ran away a continent away-“

“I did not run away!” she responded and after days of tiptoeing around her, not knowing how to react to his _friend_ besides the moments she seemed to slip back into her old, the fact that she seemed to start to get really irritated pleased him greatly because it was so much better than nothing.

“Of course, you didn’t Sparkly. And I had been born with a bear on my face. It was so atrocious it gave my ma nightmares and she cried. The moment I became sentient I had to shave it for the good of the world,” he responded rolling his eyes, and shifting uncomfortably in his viscount clothes, which meant only that his undergarments were uncomfortably snug on his privates for the ‘orlesian’ pants to fit him like some sort of stuffed animal in a costume. A pain in the ass the whole day, and considering the look on the Inquisitor’s face it was going to become brilliant. “Like you didn’t probably give up on using your magic since that beautiful meeting of diplomatic shitstorm-“

“Varric,” she warned, her hand gripping the table as she leaned in minutely, her composed façade slowly falling apart to show him the fire behind the girl that had ruled all of sudden Thedas to peace. Her answer was enough for him to know he had hit spot on, and he had thought so from the moment he had seen her missing her beloved staff.

However, might others think of the Inquisitor, Varric had seen her at her worst – which he was considering to be the present – and at best, had seen the fire burning within along with her wit, a blade so much sharper than any one she could conjure from the Fade. And now she was seething, a warning in her eyes and in the curl of her lips, his name politely spoken only tethering on a growl and Varric simply smiled.

“What do you want me to say, Ellana? That it is fine that you look like a walking corpse and act like the other half? That it does not freak me out to see you spend your days out of yourself talking to whispers of a magic fountain of the ancient long lost, which by the way I still consider it to be one of the stupidest shit you’ve ever done, and let’s not forget the long list of stupid shit I could write. It would be a hit novel. It is indeed perfectly normal and _sane_ , to do so, forgive me for even trying to bring any of this up!”

“Oh, would you shut the fuck and stop talking about things you have no understanding off!” she finally snapped, her fist hitting his table so hard it actually cracked. He frowned – and it was only partially to mourn the finest barkwood the table was made off – noting that there was no crackle of magic even with her obvious outburst, no lightening or sparks, no freezing of the room or thankfully setting his arse on fire. Taking this as an encouragement he continued.

“Sparkly,” he continued softly, understanding yet firm. “We get it. You have probably the worst taste in men, and I mean Hawke more or less married Blondie, but this isn’t okay.”

The desk cracked under the pressure of her clenched palm and Varric momentarily thought she will slap him, yet he did not back off stubbornly setting his jaw maintaining eye contact with her eyes which seemed to burn with loathing at his words. It would not be painless if she did so – a person swinging around 15 times a minute a big ass metal staff and could fight with a spirit sword should do some damage, but finally he felt that he had reached her, and when he hung her head as she fought a losing battle with her anger he only sighed.

Slowly, as not to startle a wild animal, he poured both of them another drink, and pushed the glass towards her even as she did not look up at him. He drank the whole thing.

“We cannot not talk about this,” he finally said, and in the gulf the seagulls cried, and the waves rolled in a cacophony of familiarity that he had started to associate with home, the silence stressing between them like the tendrils of penumbra lengthening as the sunset died beyond a fiery horizon.

Tiredly, she plopped down in a chair her hand resting on the palm of her hand, fingers lazily stroking patterns on her forehead. She did not open her eyes, and Varric simply downed another glass hoping to become less sober at any moment as he knew he would have to delve into the amazingly complex similarly to a fade rift relationship of one of the oldest elven gods that also slightly featured as a big bad wolf in children’s stories and who had betrayed one of the strongest women that had walked on Thedas who was momentarily acting like a widow from the Blight worrying him greatly. As he closed his eyes already defeated by circumstances, he noted down the metaphor for later use in a story, and thought that the Rifts had been exactly the same: a big gaping hole of nothings that also terrifyingly threatened to destroy the world. Huh, it should be easy.

He suddenly appreciated Blondie more, even as he still had an unimaginable urge to punch him from time to time. Out of principle of course. Not that Hawke appreciated it.

“He left,” she finally said, and the words were barely a whisper.

“Well, glad you noticed after so many months of him being gone in a self-quest of martyrial self-sacrifice as he plans to destroy the world,” he said taking another swing, and well he deserved the glare he received for that particular comment.

“What the fuck do you want,” she spat, her fury coiling around the room like a suffocating presence even as she drew no magic from the Fade, her personality and emotions burning, scalding, even as she only pinned him with a distasteful stare.

“How about you accepting the fuck out you’re heartbroken and starting to do something about it besides waste yourself away with elven whispers that will make you go mad before your body decomposes over my wind sill!”  he exclaimed, his own temper getting the better of him, worry intermingled with fury and alcohol making the words fly from his mouth harsher than what he wanted. He inhaled deeply before continuing: “Do you even realise how it pains me to see you like this?” And these were the words that made the tension fade away slowly as her expression changed from fury to mild understanding.

“I can’t be your friend Inquisitor if you don’t let me. And I am against friends wasting out in my home as they run away from the world out of principle.”

Her eyes turned soft, before they showed even a glimpse of the hurt and vulnerability that lingered behind them. And then it was gone, and Ellana was composed again in front of him, her worry and compassion putting his worry and compassion first. Oh well, what a pair they both made.

“I am no Inquisitor,” she responded softly. “Not anymore.”

“You’ll always be the Inquisitor to me,” he stated simply and she sighed, her fingers playing with invisible patterns on her skin where her erased vallaslin once branded her face.

“Ellana.”

“Yes?” she asked tiredly, so tiredly he could as if centuries had gone and past over her shoulders.

“Talk to me,” and she laughed.

“About what? My broken heart?” she mocked.

“What are you doing here? Why are you hiding from what’s left of your Inquisition?”

“I am not hi-“ but thankfully his look stopped her from finishing that sentence that would have snapped his patience in half. “Okay, I am hiding.”

“Glad we are getting somewhere, finally,” he grumbled, and he prayed to any god he didn’t really believe in that he would not have to ask why too – though certain events should probably make him at least consider practicing seriously some customs of his faith. At the same time, he could always burn Bianca and start using a simple bow.

“I needed a break,” and the answer was so mundane, anticlimactic and unexpected that he simply stared.

“So, let me get this straight. After disbanding the Inquisition at the Winter Palace, in one of the most amazing speeches that have shocked the whole Orlesian court to their briefs for the next ages, stating you’ll save the word again, this time from your ex-love, thank the Maker you didn’t mention that, you decide you need a break after gathering what’s left of your forces to haunt him down and run across the Narrow Sea because you needed a break?” As she nodded he huffed. “Well, it is reasonable. Can’t see why you hid this from me and couldn’t just say this. I have told you any time you need it, you’d be welcome here.”

But even as he said it he knew. He knew Lavellan, had come to know her all too well after 2 years of travelling and camping in the most atrocious attraction spots in all Thedas. He simply knew she could not say it because even as she had done it because she needed it too, she hated herself for it, for shrinking what she had come to intrinsically assume it was her duty until she was stripped of basic notions of comfort as a holiday. And considering who was involved, he assumed a lot of shame and conflictual feeling had come into play for his friend to even come this far. It worried him even more so.

“When is the last time you had talked to Dorian?” he asked because he will always be there for her and her friend, but he would not deny the strength of connection between her and the other mage, the way he had understood her and found the words to match her worries in a way that all his experience as a writer left him bereft and unprepared.

At her guilty and pointed look he groaned.

“Are you telling me… you seriously… have not spoken to your best friend in months?” he asked incredulously.

“It’s not like we had time,” she defended but it was weak, and she knew it.

“He gave you a magical amulet you carry around your neck right now you simply have to touch to talk to him!” And Varric was not exasperated – okay, only mildly – just incredulous that a spymaster turned Divine, and ambassador, a Seeker and an ex-templar had neither thought to do offer her – or beat into her whichever worked first – such a simple advice.

Sighing he propped himself in his chair better and motioned towards her. Ellana simply stared at him, her brows furrowing in not understanding and he simply clarified:

“Go on, talk to him now.” He knew the moment she blanched that this will take convincing, but if a Darkspawn Tevinter mage, red lyrium or his other’s friend homicidal apostate partner weren’t going to terrify neither would this.

“No way.”

“Oh, way. Because I know if I make you promise you will do it, you’ll just go into your room and… not sleep probably, and not do it.  So, we are doing it now. Send my regards to him. And Bull,” he added after a pause. As she hesitated, Varric spoke:

“I have fought with you dragons, dark Magisters, darkspawn, red templars, elves, quinary, humans and anything in between. Believe me at this point convincing you to make a magical call isn’t the biggest challenge of the universe.”

It must have been something in his words. Or perhaps in his earnest worry behind them. Perhaps she also wanted to do it. Or she was simply too tired to fight him, but her hand slowly wound up around her neck and unclasped the amulet. Varric had to appreciate its beauty, a perfectly carved crystal of dark blue, it’s depths unfathomable and unreachable as it seemed to pulse with a force alive on its own. He would never understand the depths of magic, but he was a dwarf, and things like the beauty of a carved stone he understood even as at times he tried to deny it. The stone was small snuggly fitting in the palm of Ellana’s hand, before she closed her eyes and concentrated.

Varric did not know what to expect, and he felt at a loss since he did not know how not using magic for so long would affect her abilities, but the stone seemed to glow with reddish tinges before settling towards a deep indigo, and Ellana’s features smoothened, the corners of her mouth curving up as he assumed the connection was made.

“Hello to you too, Dorian,” she responded to an unheard probably overly dramatic greeting and Varric was relieved even as he was displeased he could not hear their conversation, and he said so as much.

Ellana’s eyes shut open at his words, and he seemed to listen to some set of instructions before the Dorian’s voice was heard through his study.

“I did not expect the first time we spoke in so long to have company,” Dorian’s voice came from the stone as clear and crisp as if he had been lounging in a nearby chair, and Varric fought the impulse to look around for him. “Ellie, I am disappointed. I give you a precious and rare artefact for us to keep in contact and you do not call for months! My feelings, Ellie, my poor, poor feelings are suffering so much!” he continued exuberantly before mock sniffing. Varric simply rolled his eyes, and even Ellana smiled, a real genuine smile, softly illuminated by the ethereal glow of the amulet. “Well, not enough to ruin my make-up. I have spent ages on that. But you would understand, wouldn’t you?”

“We wouldn’t want your robes to suddenly lose the matching quality of the eyeshadow you applied around your eyes,” she quipped and Varric was very much pleased to see how her mouth curved in a tentative smirk as Dorian laughed and approved.

“Indeed! I knew you would understand. After those horrible gowns I have suffered wearing for so long I am now back to silk! What would the whole of Minrathous think if their squabbling and extremely handsome reformer would suddenly lose his charm?”

“Song along the ages will sing about your loss,” she said drily, and of course Dorian agreed wholeheartedly. Hearing them, Varric felt a sense of nostalgia, memories of gentler moments coming back to him, nights spent playing Wicked Grace around a fire, when things had been so much simpler even as he would have never believed calling an ancient evil Magister was something he would do. He doubted very much that at least for now Ellana would indulge him in a game for the old time’s sake.

“Now then, it is rude not to even say hello to your guest. Who is it?”

“It is only I, Sparkler,” Varric answered and he couldn’t really cast off the weariness in his voice. The amulet glowed with no input for a few seconds, and as Varric asked if the connection had been broken, he spoke once more, some of his exuberance dulled down as he obviously took in the situation.

“Well, that certainly explains why you had dodged my question about you not being asleep and the dreary weather,” he commented casually, making Varric wonder if Dorian simply blasted off a series of questions the moment he tuned in to the connection if he had enough time to ask so many things. “Thought I doubt the Free Marches are much more pleasant during this time of the year,” and the sound he made Varric assumed to be a shudder.

“You have only cruel words about my homeland,” Ellana joked, even as her tensed with unsaid worry to perhaps something only she picked upon from the other. Varric had to agree. As much as he loved Kirkwall the city and the whole Free Marches were a shit hole, and no he did not think of the simple fact the streets had never been cleaned until half of the city collapsed and had to be repaired.

“As you have about mine. Correctly formed after everything that happened, well I would say the last few years, but millennia would be more accurate. We gotta not forget we had once enslaved the world. It is part of the capital aesthetic I guess. Even so,” Dorian continued in a torrent of remarks as if he had been holding off speech for the past few months -  and considering the mage, he probably felt as if he had considering these two’s friendship, “I can’t believe you do not contact me for months, but you are there, with our precious very royal now dwarf, no offence Varric, and I am just so heart. Heartbroken! Our connection, Ellie?! I thought it was more than this. I will have to go mediate the sorrow away. Or ask Bull to thoroughly distract me from my suffering. Wait, are best friends that have not spoken in months able to mention each other’s sex life in the first magical call? I am afraid I have no precedent in these customs. With calls or friends,” Dorian quipped, and even as his words were light-hearted, Varric felt the underlying hurt he downplayed, the way he felt more about the situation than he let on. Ellana thought so too, as her eyes met his swimming with sorrowful regret and pain, before she cleared her voice.

“I apologise for my late call, Dorian.”

“Such a formal apology, Inquisitor. I will demand only a few acres of the finest Orlesian land to soothe my heart in case this reform things fails and I will be forever banished from Tevinter so I will have where to go,” he joked, and Ellana smiled thoughtfully.

“I doubt that is in my power anymore, but I would see if Leliana is able to secure some favours.”

“Excellent! Most wonderful! Now, can you please explain my dear why you sound as if you had fought 100 darkspawn in the last hour? It is most troubling.”

But Ellana didn’t answer, and her lips pressed stubbornly and Varric understood another puzzle piece of why she had done what he simply considered a grave mistake. With quill and letters, one could very well lie, but through a magical call with Dorian? She had known there was no way to hide, no way to dissuade the other’s keen intuition.

“Our Inquisitor does many things these days, but few include fighting darkspawn,” he answered instead, and even when she shot him a look and an angered word he did not care to apologise.

“Oh? Is that so?” Dorian asked. “What does our lovely Ellie bother herself with that tires her so. I hope it is nothing too scandalous.”

“It is scandalous. Quite outrageous,” Varric continued and his eyes said if she even dared to finish the connection he could have many inventive ways to convince her to remake it. “Our dear friend barely sleeps anymore, spends all her waking hours lost in a daze as she whispers with lost elves in her mind talking to a mythical fountain of dread, and won’t move from my window until all the winter air in Kirkwall has made sure to have cost her the fingers of her other hand,” Varric drawled even as Ellana left out a groan of pain, her head hitting the back of armchair. It amused Varric; a highly skilled warrior and mage acting as if she had her darkest secrets revealed to her parents.

Dorian kept quiet for a while, and Ellana seemed to work her mouth open to correct or deny any of those accusations, but each time the words seemed to have failed her. In the end Dorian only sighed deeply, the sound of shuffling robes and echoing steps in some great hallway the only sounds giving away the connection had not been lost.

“Ellie,” he finally said, his voice serious, and Varric thought that finally was someone to shake some sense into the girl. “Actually, no, you can’t be trusted with such an important question. Master dwarf, please tell me this important aspect,” Dorian asked solemnly, his voice resounding slightly as he seemed to pass in a different room.

“Ask away, Sparkles.”

“How does her hair look like?”

Well… Varric did not know how to answer that because he had never considered it in the first place, the question throwing him off completely. From all the things he had expected to come from Dorian with such gravity he had not expected… Meeting Ellana’s violet eyes that were already rolling away, presumably knowing where this lead. Still, he answered.

“It’s… umm, longer? It’s probably parted more to the middle? And her side bangs grew?”

“No braids?” Dorian asked with a solemnity fitted for state affairs than fashion enquires.

“No braids,” Varric confirmed and Dorian sighed deeply.

“I see… it is quite grave indeed.” Varric stopped himself from pointing out that a fashion disaster was the least of their problems at the moment but held off, as Dorian continued speaking.

“Well, I should have expected as much, but honestly, Ellie? Not calling? Doing all these to yourself? What were you even thinking?”

It was the quiet disappointed in Dorian’s voice that broke her silence, her voice sounding small and strangled as she answered.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“No. I wouldn’t,” Dorian stated simply, yet sympathetically. “Because you shut me out. As you shut all of us out. Thought I can imagine. Varric of all people should probably understand even better, considering his friend with another apostate mage whose relationship was quite… explosive,” he continued and Varric rolled his eyes at a joke he had heard a thousand times after Adamant and he still thought as lame as the first time he had heard it. “Not to say his experience with the name bearer of his crossbow,” and Varric was decidedly less pleased by this reminder.

“It wasn’t that easy,” she whispered, her answer choked underneath a hundred deeper emotions.

“Well, you not using your magic for months definitely made it harder to make any magical calls,” Varric said softly, but this time it was Dorian’s time to shout out in surprise.

“You what?! Ellie! Please tell me you didn’t!”

“I did use my magic!” she defended loudly, and shot Varric an ugly accusing look. “Just not in the usual way,” and Varric’s heart sank because whenever the words magic and unusual mixed together it was the prefect recipe for disaster. Probably one that screamed the end of the world. Again.

“What did you do?” Dorian asked, and his voice was hard, none of the previous humour or gentleness in his voice.

“I simply used it in another place!” she explained, and her voice rose defensively.

“As in a physical place?”

“As in the Fade,” she admitted with a sigh, and Varric rubbed the bridge of his crooked nose in an attempt to not go around the table and shake his friend.

“Ellana…,” Dorian started. But she didn’t even let him finish.

“It was not in the Fade. Not physically,” she explained fastly, fury and worry and dread coating her words, a torrent of shameful explanation unwillingly leaving her lips. “It was in my dreams.”

“You are a Dreamwalker,” Dorian stated flatly, and Ellana nodded even as he couldn’t see her.

“Sominari’s were far more than that,” she hissed, insulted, and even as Varric knew not much of the magical lore he knew enough to understand that this meant bad.

“Ellana…,” Dorian started again.

“I was safe! It is my ability, a thing my kind has been able to do since the dawn of time, and was simply forgotten,” and Varric almost hissed at the similarities, the words familiar, as well as the tone, arrogant skill followed with a clipped explanation, so familiar even if not from her. Dorian must have thought so too, because he said nothing for a while, the background rustling with life through the connection even thousands of miles apart.

“You could have been possessed,” Dorian hissed, and Varric watched as she already shook her head, the stump of her arm moving as if she had thought to wave it, before falling back to her side. “So many things could have happened,” he said with barely supressed anger. “Your sleepless nights, you dwelling into the Well of Sorrow… what could you do this for…”

But he didn’t have to finish it. Or say it. Neither did Varric. They all knew what she had done this for.

“It is not what you think,” she finally said.

“Is it not? Have you not delved into ancient elven magic to learn to reshape the Fade, possibly breaking the world in the meanwhile considering who you _are_ and what you can do to search for a particular bald headed ancient god?” Dorian asked pleasantly with the same amount of saccharine venom as a drip of poison a partying glass would hold at an Orlesian ball.

“I had to try!” she cried out, and her body shook. “I had to do something. Anything. The dreams, Dorian, you could never understand the dreams. You could never feel how the Fade feels to _me_. Us.” Varric doubted there was much question who the plural was referring too. “You cannot go back from knowing what it can do. And then there is the magic, the magic of the Anchor burning, itching, clawing and there is not way, not a single way it could go away. Could you even understand how it feels to have a part of him burning bright in you, tight to your very core, your dreams haunted by him, and the waking hours by whispers of his steps?!” But even as her voice rose higher and higher, the words tumbling out in an unwanted, painful confessions, a ballad of her suffering and pain, she could not help but whisper at the end, as her hand protectively wound around against her chest, the agony of living simply seeming to bend her in too as nothing else had managed to.

It was not even out of desperate love; there was no secret of how she felt for him, but this mournful suffering, this shattering desperation wasn’t one borne out of love or melancholy or heartbreak. It was the crashing tide of magic and physical anguish tearing at her sanity, the losses piling up against the victories of the unknown veil of uncertainty that had been raised over her life in the most gruesome way possible. Yet, even so she wanted to _save him_ as her lover, and foremost as her friend, because there was something she saw in him, even as Varric could not see something more than a punching bag convenient for his boiling anger.

“Ellie…,” Dorian whispered, and it was an apology, regret and sorrow in one word, things he needn’t express unless to belittle them both. “He appears in your dreams?” Her laugh was hollow, a haunted mimicry of happiness.

“He does. At times. Sometimes. I don’t know. I have first thought they were simple happenstance because… of everything. But not after a while. As I reach for him… he is always gone,” she replied softly, brokenly and bitterly with scathing hatred. “Even so,” she continued, her voice stronger, alike the voice of a person that commanded a hall to quiet with a simple spoken word and a burst of magic, “the Fade and its dreams were his weapon. By the old g… by whatever force if I were to leave him best me,” she stated with a burning almost fanatical determination, hatred intermingling with hurt and love into one precarious feeling.

Varric was left speechless, not even knowing how to begin to process this, and Dorian was left just as speechless. Quiet apprehension and admiration for the woman they both cared and agreed to follow to their deaths.

“He haunts your dreams? Well, someone definitely didn’t get a memo on how to handle a break up,” and her laugh was teary, slightly watery. Varric had the decency to look away as she wiped away a stray tear.

“We didn’t break up,” she confessed jokingly, but Varric’s heart sank at her confession, because under piece of the puzzle lined up. And it was unfair, unfair that she loved him still, that he knew she could not kill off the feeling taking roots in her very being even as it suffocated her because there was simply no other choice at this point but loving him. The words she whispered in elven were lost to his dwarven ears, but their meaning was melancholic, a whisper of what ifs and could have beens.

Dorian only sighed, and they stood in silence, the coldness of the winter washing over them as the heavy words were carried away in wisps across the dark night sky, smoke against a charcoal background hiding the stars and their brightness from the world. It was not long until he had to apologise and leave, duties and people calling for him, even as he wrought promises of conversations from her lips. In the end a dwarf and an elf were left to silently contemplate the hollowness of the night sky.

Varric thought of the past, thought of the present, and did not even begin to contemplate the future. Wordlessly, the glasses were refilled in silent companionship, and as the clock of the main tower rang hollowly over the higher gardens of the city port Ellana downed her glass, setting it down with a definite tunk against the mahogany desk.

In the wounds uphill from the city a lonely wolf trudged through the snow guided by the moon to find his back as an owl cry resounded into the night.


End file.
